I recently sold my TN panel monitor. I’ve owned various TN and IPS monitors before and my plan was to own a cheap TN panel monitor and then upgrade to an OLED, but OLED doesn’t seem to be mainstream yet and I do not like TN panels.

This isn’t really a full length review; I am not going to talk about all the USB features and post photographs unless someone specifically requests it. Most people buying a professional monitor only care about a few things, reliability, the colour gamut and the colour accuracy. The refresh rate and the monitor’s features etc. can be found on most spec sheets.

BenQ PG2401PT and the Dell U2414

The BenQ PG2401PT and the Dell U2413 both have the same panel type i.e. they’re made by LG. The colours are great. The BenQ has pretty good uniformity, but both of them suffer fairly abysmal contrast ratios–that’s the nature of LCD. The Dell’s contrast ratio has been measured at 1003:1 with uniformity mode off. In my opinion, the BenQ PG2401PT could have been the most suitable monitor for the price range but having sent multiple back as faulty, I would avoid buying from them again. Colorconfidence were great throughout the entire ordeal and I recommend shopping with them.

Achieving 10 bit colour with a consumer card

With some consumer AMD cards, you can get the benefits of 10 bit colour. If you go to the catalyst control centre, click “information” and then click “software”, you’ll see “2D Driver File Path.” Copy this to the clipboard. In regedit, paste this in the search box and look for “dithering”. By default, AMD dithers the colours to reduce banding but if you have 10 bit colour enabled system, then disable dithering. Some of the older cards don’t support 10 bit colour. The professional cards do but they’re not very powerful and if you can get a more powerful consumer card that supports it, you’ll likely save some money.

The defects associated with IPS panels

I’ve written this page to warn others about IPS panels or rather the defects associated with them. I’ve owned countless TN panels and none of them were faulty. The first BenQ PG2401PT monitor I received had a manufacturer date of 2014, and it had some hot pixels. These presented themselves if you clicked the paint bucket tool in photoshop and created a black background. They were somewhat green to look at.

Then BenQ shipped me another monitor. It arrived with the same problem, and one replacement had “image persistence” which looked somewhat like screen burn–this can be common but it was especially bad with that monitor. If you displayed something bright on the screen for a long time and then closed that window, it’d still show the previous window somewhat.

I gave up after a few monitors and returned the monitor to the shop and got a full refund. Colorconfidence were great and I am definitely going to shop with them again. They tried their best to be helpful and were quick to give me my money back. I don’t appreciate companies making rules about where dead pixels should be. I understand it’s interpreted from an ISO standard but if the sales page says “0 pixel defect”, then the customer is entitled to that.

Eizo Coloredge CS240 Problem

I then bought an Eizo ColorEdge CS240 monitor from Scan simply because it was cheaper there; I would have preferred to buy from Colorconfidence but I’m sure they were sick of me by that point. The monitor arrived with dark spots behind the screen. I believe it was dust. If I created a green spot behind it in photoshop and then I physically moved, the two dots would go out of alignment i.e. parallax. Eizo weren’t so helpful but I received a refund.

Dell u2413 and their customer service

I later bought a Dell U2413 monitor from box.co.uk. It had the hot pixel problem the BenQ PG2401PT monitor had. They apologised for my trouble but said they weren’t able to get Dell to contact me.

I spoke to Dell and they stated they were going to swap the unit at my door, and that it might take a few days. The monitor was cheaper, the colours look pretty much the same but the uniformity definitely isn’t as good with uniformity mode off.

If you’re wanting a 99% Adobe RGB 1999 colour accurate monitor with the best uniformity, I would suggest buying a NEC. Their customer service is comparable to Dells. They do on-site warranty too. If you’re not so concerned about uniformity, then the Dell U2413 monitor might be better. It has better colours than the Eizo but there are even more expensive Eizo screens with comparable colours. The Eizo had better uniformity and the contrast ratios were superior to the BenQ (not quite as good as the Dell) but they’re all sub 1000:1 with uniformity mode on. At that price range, I would avoid them and go with NEC though.

If you believe this could have been computer related, please note that the returned units were deemed faulty by technicians, and the faults presented themselves plugged in or otherwise to my computer.

The new Dell monitor arrived without fault and the previous was collected the day after. They do it this way so that it doesn’t interrupt people very much i.e. you are not without a monitor. I haven’t noticed any problems yet and I am impressed by the customer service. It took me about 25 minutes on the phone to get an RMA and replacement, and the replacement monitor arrived less than 24 hours later. To put it into context, it took more than 24 hours just to get a reply from Eizo and they’re meant to be such a prestigious company. From now on, I think I’ll only shop with Dell and NEC as far as monitors are concerned.

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